Spot Runner Chooses Yodle to Service SMBs

Spot Runner . . . and Yodle Inc. . . . announced a strategic partnership that makes Yodle the local online advertising partner for Spot Runner. As part of the partnership, Yodle will assume responsibility for providing local online advertising services for Spot Runner’s local online clients, including several noteworthy franchise accounts, and collaborate with Spot Runner on future opportunities . . .

Spot Runner conducted a pilot program to evaluate Yodle’s online lead generation services and based on the positive results, it selected Yodle as its local online advertising partner.

This is a nice affirmation for Yodle and obviously the end of a disastrous chapter for Spot Runner, which bought Weblistic only to shutter it after many false starts, mishaps and miscues around strategic direction.

In an email exchange with Yodle CEO Court Cunningham this morning he said:

I think this portends future consolidation. The two drivers will be 1) need for companies to focus where they can be great and partner in areas where they cannot (this case) 2) bandwidth at the SMB. The small business owner is being bombarded by solicitations and trusted brands need to emerge to simplify the buying process for them.

I certainly agree with his second point. There’s still way to much confusion and “noise” in the market.

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This entry was posted on August 11, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Local Search, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I worked in this department before it was nuked and we were told web.com was the big suitor, but they obviously never landed on a deal. SR also courted ReachLocal early on, but to little interest. I imagine they dumped it for nothing to Yodle, as the churn rate for these clients ranged from dire to astronomical.